Then he followed them.
Chapter Nineteen
Of the three men, Walker was the one Blade believed he could work with. The younger man did not trust anyone, a trait with which Blade could easily identify. He did not talk too much either—or complain—and was quick to see things that needed to be done.
So on this afternoon, several days after they had all taken up residence in the village, it was Walker Blade chose to accompany him into the mining shaft he was currently exploring. A second man remained on guard duty while the third was foraging for necessities in a village a half-day’s walk away. Laurel and Raven were reviving a smokehouse they’d found.
Blade carried the lantern as they traveled deeper into the mine. The air grew heavy and dank, and the tunnel, narrower. They had no protective hats to wear and Blade was suspicious of the ceiling’s stability.
“Watch out for snakes,” Walker warned him. “Don’t put your hands in any holes.”
Blade was also familiar with mines and remembered the other dangers. At this time of year, snakes came inside and made nests in crevices for the winter. Most were harmless. Some, like the goldthief, were not.
It turned out that Walker had experience as a blaster—an explosives engineer responsible for breaking rock. His ability to move in shadow had made him invaluable in the mines of the lower regions because he could slip into places most men could not, then offer a proper assessment of the ore seams he found. After the demons were banished, his coworkers had no longer been as willing to overlook his unusual talents. He had been out of work, adrift, and on his way back to the village where he’d been raised when he met up with the other three spawn and learned his home was gone.
Blade swung the lantern high so he could see farther ahead down the tracks. It was possible that with access to skills such as Walker’s the mines here could indeed be reworked. If there was money to be made the neighbors might be more forgiving of their eccentricities, especially if the new residents proved to be non-threatening. These people, Walker and Laurel in particular, were harmless, although right now they felt cornered and that would make anyone unpredictable.
As far as Blade could tell, the mine was safe. All seemed fine. He had no idea why it had been abandoned.
“What’s your opinion?” he asked Walker.
“It’s stable enough, but I want to check behind that blockage,” Walker replied.
The boy had been shifting to shadow, slipping back and forth through walls to explore side tunnels for the past half hour. He took the lantern with him when he did, something Blade found equally as interesting as it was disconcerting. If Walker and his other companions could all carry things with them when they were in shadow—people, perhaps—miners would not need to worry so much about becoming trapped underground. But giving up the lantern left Blade blind while he waited for Walker to return.
Although he had spent the first fourteen years of his life in these depths, he had never cared for mining. Blade had been big for his age and the labor had done him no real harm, but he’d hated when the light disappeared and miners were forced to wait in darkness. Being down below was not the same as the natural gloom of a moonless night. This was complete black—oppressive and suffocating, as if a man had been swallowed by the stomach of the earth. He could not tell if he was sitting or standing. If he tried to move his arms or legs, he became disoriented and fell over.
Blade forced himself to breathe normally, closing his mind to all extraneous thoughts, and concentrated on Raven instead.
He thought it likely the goddess who spoke to him was right when she said that he would fail Raven when it came to protecting her. If her father was telling the truth—in this instance Blade couldn’t afford to assume he was not—then the others were in as much danger as she was, and they would all have to stand and fight. None of them, however, could resort to using their demon abilities. If they did, it would bring stronger and more determined forces against them. Somehow he had to impress that upon them.
But good as he was, by himself he did not truly believe he was capable of fighting off more than one trained assassin at a time. He’d paid for such arrogance before. In the end, he was an ordinary man. If they could not use their demon talents, then the possibility of Laurel and her companions offering any real assistance to him was slight, and while Raven was good with her bow, she was the one he wanted most to protect. He did not, under any circumstances, wish to place her in danger and therefore within her demon father’s reach.
A shout from the direction of the mine’s entrance, far off in the distance, stabbed through the thick sea of black. It echoed off the far reaches of the tunnel shaft before ending abruptly. Blade started, reaching for his knives, reacting on instinct to the cry, then staggered and cracked his head against the chiseled stone of the tunnel wall. As one hand snagged the edge of a sharp cleft to keep from falling over, a faint movement of air and a slight hiss warned him of danger. Something heavy crawled over his right boot. Nasty images of what had happened to Raven after the goldthief bite jigged to the foreground of his thoughts. He was not certain he could survive the nightmares as well as she had. He forced himself to remain still.
Then, Walker was back. The bright yellow beam from the lantern puddled the tunnel floor as Walker shone it in Blade’s direction. The tail end of a long snake disappeared into the shadows behind a detritus of crumbled rock.
“Did you hear someone shout?” Walker asked.
“Yes,” Blade replied grimly. “I did.”
They moved with caution, as fast as they dared, up the gentle slope of the mine shaft. The air they breathed cleared and grew colder. When the blackness became less dense and the lantern’s beam farther reaching, Blade extinguished its light. After that, he followed the sound of Walker’s footsteps.
Within a few moments, daylight from outside began to turn the black to gray.
Not far from the entrance to the mine, one of Walker’s companions sat with his back against a wall. He had his head slumped forward between his knees, and Blade did not need to touch him to know he was dead. The smell made that apparent enough, as did the wide pool of congealing blood.
Blade crouched to take a better look. The man had deep claw marks down one side of his face and across his shoulder. One cheek had peeled off in a large flap of skin. His coat and the shirt underneath were shredded to expose jagged wounds.
And his throat had been torn out.
…
Creed pushed through the patches of dreary, leafless forest and the barren mountain passes, trailing behind Justice and the assassins. After following the men through rough terrain for several days and eavesdropping at night, Creed’s worst fears were confirmed. Siege was dead. And whereas Siege, who was also a Godseeker, could have stood firm, Armor had been forced to acquiesce to Justice’s demands.
The ten assassins had caught up with Justice not far from the goddess boundary, but he had been heading away from it, following tracks he believed to be Blade and Raven’s. He swore that they had more spawn with them and were amassing an army.
The conclusion had puzzled Creed at first until he scouted ahead and realized Blade and Raven were being followed by more than Justice. There were too many footprints. His worry shifted to alarm. The situation was escalating beyond one he believed he could contain. Raven was in real trouble, and Blade would not be enough to protect her.
Another confusing piece in the puzzle was the woman accompanying Justice. As he’d listened at the edge of their encampment during the past few nights, he had heard disturbing rumors about her. Some of the men were inclined to believe she was a goddess. Creed confessed he found it difficult to believe that Justice would align himself with anything else, but it seemed he had. Creed did not need to get close to her to know she was half demon, and Justice kept too tight a rein on her, as if she were more his prisoner than someone he worshipped, to be ignorant of the fact.